Tag: George Allen Miller

George Allen Miller’s story “Just Five Minutes” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 3 March 2017. This story started as a writing prompt in an online class run by The Brainery and taught by Jerome Stueart. The prompt was to write about your city. Gentrification is tearing through DC and changing the city in drastic ways. This story evolved from my experiences with gentrifiers and families that have lived in my neighborhood their entire lives. …

“Can I get five for fifteen?” an old man said. Jerome looked up from the sidewalk and into the old man’s eyes. Junior was a local; he’d grown up two houses down the street, though he didn’t live there anymore. He usually slept in the alley behind Tenth Street, beside a dumpster. His wrinkled face, half covered with patches of gray beard, held a mix of sadness and pain, just like every other long time …

A: In short, yes. Scientifically speaking, we have proof that water and organic compounds exist in space. We have a growing body of evidence that planets are plentiful and that they do exist in the habitable zone of solar systems. Which means life is almost a certainty. If life exists, there’s no reason to think technologically advanced life wouldn’t also exist. I think the one dimension not spoken of in the Fermi Paradox is time. Life has existed on earth for four billion years and in all that time a technologically advanced species has only risen on the Earth once and only in the last 100 years. If we add a time dimension to the Fermi Paradox, I think it answers the question quite nicely of where is everyone. They either have already existed or have not yet evolved. If you add to the Fermi paradox the odds to have developed technology and managed to do so in the same 100-200 years that Humanity has, the millions of alien species that should exist are so spread out over time that their odds of crossing another species are likely pretty remote. We also have no idea of the longevity of a technologically advanced species.

George Allen Miller’s story “Just Five Minutes” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 3 March 2017.Subscribe to our e-mail updates so you’ll know when new stories go live.

George lives in Washington DC with his loving wife, mandarin-speaking kids, naked-foot-biting cat and elderly dog. When not writing he spends his time losing chess games, taking acting classes and working in the software industry.